


In a Minute There is Time

by proxydialogue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5x18 companion fic, Character Study, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mind was made up days before Van Nuys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Minute There is Time

**Author's Note:**

> Archived from LJ. Orig pub: 6/21/2011
> 
> Title taken from T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock'.

_Do I dare_   
_Disturb the Universe?_   
_In a minute there is time_   
_For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse._

    
    
He met them at the corner of two streets, at a diminutive juncture of north/south and east/west. They stood shoulder to shoulder, speaking quietly in the shadow of a road sign, with their vast destinies netted around them. Their heads were bowed close and they whispered like a pair of nervous children conspiring to steal money from their parents. On an empty lane, lined with private hedgerows and trees, they whispered. Their faces and eyes snapped up together at his arrival and the echoed thought of  _Thank God_ flickered between them. They hadn't been sure he would come.   
    
It was endearing.   
    
The three of them walked east. The sign at the street's origin didn't give its name, only displayed a blue and white arrow that indicated there was an interstate somewhere at the end of it. Nothing important on this road; it was just a road that went to other roads.   
    
And possibly to a demon that was eating the livers of children. Dean and Sam were hopelessly committed to risking their own lives for the benefit of children. A psychological side effect of their own premature disillusionments, Castiel suspected. He also suspected they knew it and had decided the weakness was worth the recompense.    
    
A momentary decision, predictably made again and again. One of the ways in which Dean and Sam were consistently predetermined by their own histories, even while they charged ahead, breaking rules and screwing Heaven, like they were the cowboys of freewill.   
    
Castiel looked to his left and stopped to observe a chain link fence. It was rusty and old, crowded with naked vines that the sun and the drought had dried into brown husks. On the other side of the fence was a mother, cursing at her deck grill as she sucked on her burned finger. Six used matches were scattered in the pile of charcoal. A small, rat-like dog was preoccupied with a sock, pilfered from the one dirty foot of the two year old on the patio rocks.   
    
A healthy black widow was climbing her way up the dead vines to the top of the fence. And because he had looked, he now had a choice.   
    
He could kill the spider. Or he could let her go.   
    
It would be a mammoth display of pride to take her life.  _Especially_  because he knew. Because to kill her was to make a value statement about which of his father's creature had more of a right to live, purely on the basis of coincidence and nature. It was the equivalent of announcing himself a rightful agent of fate. And he knew better than that, he knew that, however big he  _felt,_ however important the Winchester's were, his role was small.   
    
But he could see both tomorrows like tributaries before him: a sobbing mother in a hospital and a toppled bowl of oatmeal at home, or a tiny black body washed off the sidewalk by the rain.   
    
Dean and Sam had stopped a few feet ahead and were looking back at him. Sam's neck had a fading ring of yellow and green from a previous encounter with something that wanted to kill him, but he didn't fidget, or rub at it. He wore it like a part of his wardrobe. His eyes were always fighting back to Dean, budding distrust and worry carved so deeply into his face it was amazing Dean could ignore it. Sam had guessed something horrible and he wasn't saying it. Dean was easier, he was frowning and scratching his right shoulder, the burned bottom of a handprint peeking out from beneath the hem of his sleeve.   
    
"Cas?" Sam asked and brought back the immediacy of liver eating demons, rang the present into focus on the taught and worn string of his voice.   
    
"You with us, dude?" Dean gestured at the space between himself and his brother where Cas had been walking a second before. It was such a small question. Such a finite meaning.   
    
Castiel supposed Dean ignored the look on Sam's face through the well-practiced persistence of lying to himself. Just as Castiel had tried to pass on his responsibilities to his wiser brothers by pretending he was only the sharp edge of a greater weapon and not the hand that swung it.   
    
 _Are you with us?_    
    
"I am," Castiel answered. He knocked the spider to the sidewalk and crushed her beneath his heel.


End file.
